Another update already? No, you're pretty little 3eyes are not deceiving you, it really is the fourth update in the last week.

So what's this update all about? Surely we don't have enough demos for an update already? Well, actually we do, but you're not going to see them just yet. Instead I'm going to add the last two RotW maps to the main archive. Those of you with good memories (I.e. Can remember yesterday) will perhaps be wondering why I wanted to get this done while Thomas was still on holiday. The reason is that I'm also going to sneak on a third, rather silly map at the same time. :-)

First, a reminder of the winning demos from Contest One : runerun...

• Easy Run : Martin Selinus : 0:18
• Easy 100% : Thomas Stubgaard : 0:30
• Nightmare Run : Robert Axelsson : 0:20
• Nightmare 100% : Thomas Stubgaard : 0:42
• ER2 : Carl Tholin and Daniel Hansson : 0:15
• EH2 : Carl Tholin and Daniel Hansson : 0:27
• NR2 : Carl Tholin and Pezzer Mattson : 0:22
• NR2 : Carl Tholin and Pezzer Mattson : 0:49
• Please name any new demos rr_xxx.

And the two winners and one mistaken demo from Contest Two : horror...

• Easy 100% : Anders Nordensten : 0:27
• Nightmare Run : Martin Selinus : 0:24
• Nightmare 100% : Aleksander Osipov : 0:31
• Please name any new demos hor_xxx.

And as a special treat here's a funny little map that first came to our attention in, ohhhhhh, March 2002, probably, when we were trawling through hundreds of old maps to see what we thought was runnable. There was a very small map called rings2, for which I did the Easy and Nightmare runs in 0:05 within a few minutes. We then decided that since the 100%s could be done in 15-20 seconds it probably wouldn't be much fun to add the map. Then, quite by coincidence, I had a little chat with Joe on IRC a couple of weeks later that went something like this...

Jozsef : Hey Morfy. You busy?
Morfans : No. Just downloading some pr0n.
Jozsef : I just did a demo on a new map.
Morfans : Oh? Which map?
Jozsef : rings2
Morfans : Really. I was looking at that a couple of weeks ago. I got 0:05 in the runs.
Jozsef : The runs are dull. 0:05 is simple and optimum. I did the Easy 100%.
Morfans : Cool. Did you get under 0:15?
Jozsef : LOL
Jozsef : I did 0:07. :-)

Now we all agreed the map wasn't up to much, and everytime I mention adding it people look at me in a strange way, but eight kills, two of them Shamblers, in seven seconds deserves to be seen. In fact, I'd call it MUST DOWNLOAD. Please call any new demos r2_xxx.

There, I've been wanting to do that for ages. I now feel purged.

All demos download is available here (Denmark).

Ahhh, demos. Don't you just love 'em? Me? I love 'em. And here, presented in the ancient "Waggy" format, are some.

Easy Run Demos

• Just the one Easy Run, but it's a stonker. Anders Nordensten, flushed with his current success in the 2003 Speedrunning Championship has once again returned to the world of regular demos. He improved Denn's Easy Run of rit2 by one smooth second to get 0:36. Will Denis fight back? I hope so, a battle between these two hungry young pretenders would be well worth seeing. :-)

Easy 100% Demos

We've had a quartet (quintet if you count the one the was beaten before it arrived...) of tablefillers from Anders and Basil de Vries.

• First up we have Basil filling the gaping ebony hole with a neat little 1:08.
• Then he did a nice 2:35 on mymap. Anders sent in a 2:50 soon after but it was blown aside by Basil's better route planning.
• Basil again with a pretty sloppy rit2 Easy 100% in 2:34, fourteen seconds slower than the Nightmare 100%. :-P
• Then Anders waded into the fray again with a 2:14 on trinity.

Nightmare Run Demos

• Basil also did the Nightmare Run of ebony1 in 1:36. This level gets a little bit busy during the Nightmare Run so he basically had to kill most of the monsters along the way. This will be easily improvable if anyone thinks they can run three times through several rooms packed full of the biggest, meanest monsters the game can throw at you...
• For his last demo of this update Orbs did the Nightmare Run of rit2 in 0:43. Any demo with an ogre grenade jump is always going to be cool... :-)
• Basil, since you, as usual, got the demo names, times and skills wrong in every single mail you sent us I think you should thank Stubby for sorting them all out and working out what each one was actually suppossed to be and renaming them accordingly. Cool demos, but REALLY! ;-)

Nightmare 100% Demos

• Connor Fitzgerald sent in THREE improvements to Amrik's dwell Nightmarre 100%. To 1:41, then 1:37 and finally to 1:34, fifteen seconds faster. This is a completely different route with some great tricks in it, starting with a nifty trigger_hurt jump, followed by a Tholinesque piece of haphazard grenade placing and it just gets better from there. (NOTE: Only the 1:34 is included in the all demos download.)
• Back to Anders again for the last demo of the update. He improved my Nightmare 100% of trinity by twenty-five seconds using pretty much the same route. The difference, of course, is that he has some talent. :-) 2:18.

That's it for the demos, just a couple of other little items for you before I leave. Firstly, Stubby has tidied up our Links page to remove all the old, dead links and also add one new one, Quake Terminus, Megazoid's excellent Quake news/review site.

And what update would be complete without a quick mention of the current contest. I'm sure nobody's going to forget, but I just thought I'd give you an early reminder anyway. :-)

There should be another update in a coule of days containing some stuff that I was going to put into this update, but it was already getting too long. I want to get it posted before Lowdis gets back from holiday, though, or he'll probably try to stop me. :-)

Night night, sweet runners.

Oops, Nearly Forgot This One

There was one more demo, but I doubt you'll be interested in it. What the hell, I might as well post it...

WHO THE FUCK DO I THINK I'M KIDDING?? Jozsef Szalontai has returned from his well earned break by beating a demo that I thought would stand as long as the archive stayed in business. He improved one of the most popular demos of all time, Ilkka's double-fiend-boosting Nightmare Run of The Grisly Grotto by one second to get 0:18. Not quite sure where the saving of just over a second comes from, I guess that Joe2003 is just even hotter than before! MUST DOWNLOAD!

All demos download is available here (Denmark).

This is it boys and gals, the final batch of demos in the tRR series! These demos are (or shall we say WERE...) the cream of the crop, or to put it simple, the best of the best.

• Since two of the demos in this update belongs to Markus, why not start with one of his. Martin and him had quite a fight over this map, and Markus pulled the longest straw as he's done so many times before. He took the quadded grenade jump a little step further, by throwing the grenade a bit earlier which enabled him to bunny around the corner as well. I think that's what saved him the extra few tenths. The Elder God Shrine in 0:37.

• I doubt there's little Markus can do about this next demo though, as it already seems optimized! It's courtesy of Martin Selinus, and it was (as far as I know) the last map in the tRR project to be improved over the old project. Martin improved Peter's already tricky demo on The Vaults Of Zin by 1 second to get 0:13. Optimized?

• Back to Markus again for the third demo of the evening, and probably the final demo you will ever see from him, unfortunately! He rocked the sewers in The Necropolis, luring the zombie at the end VERY quickly to give him a time of 0:32. He got stuck at the gold key door though, and he could have thrown the grenade a bit earlier too. Maybe those two things combined would save an extra second, so if you feel lucky and want to test your skills, why not give this map a go? Of course there's still the issue of the bitchy zombie at the end which will most likely screw up all of your attempts :-)

• And here it is, the demo everyone has been waiting for! The Slipgate Complex in 0:21 by the devil himself, Mr. Peter Horvath! I will let the demo speak for itself, but I encourage you to read his .txt file AFTER you've watched his demo. He gives a little 'hint' as to how he managed to do the tricky barrel boost as smoothly as he did....

Ok, that's it, there's no more secret Quake done Quick demos waiting to be released! You've seen them all. It's over, finito! So don't come begging for more now ya hear? :-) With that being said, I think we should all give a big applause to two of the biggest legends in speedrunning, Markus Taipale and Peter Horvath! Too bad we won't be seeing anymore demos from these two guys ever again, but that's how it goes sometimes, Yonatan (most likely the biggest legend) quit speedrunning in '98 and the community didn't die from that, so this won't kill us either!

SDA WILL LIVE ON FOREVER! (or for as long as people will submit demos to our site) :-)

One other thing before I jump into bed and dream about the Canadian F1 Grand Prix that's due tomorrow (go Kimi go!). SDA is "Site of the Day" again over at PQ.com, and we're always getting cool scoops from PQ's very own buttercup, Jube. Keep working on those sit-ups baby!! /sda loves j00

All demos download is available here (Denmark).

Oh yes indeed. It's time to kick off the third round of the 2003 Speedrunning Championship. Why today? Well, it's to give you four full weekends (and three of those boring long bits in between) to work on the four contested runs on the hauntingly familiar Plaec of Two Deahts!

It is, of course, a copy of the never popular "DM1 - The Place Of Two Deaths", originally made by someone at Id (Romero, Willits or one of that shower) and cunningly converted into a very fun single player speedrunning map by Basil de Vries. Top work, Loony Dutchman!

As alluded to earlier, all four regular SDA disciplines are being contested and the closing date is Midnight CET, Sunday 6th July. Head on over to the contest page to grab the map and read the rules.

The only new thing here is that the sda_contest mailbox will now generate an automatic reply to any mail it receives to let you know that we've received your demos safely. No reply probably means your demo didn't reach us.

If you don't believe me (I know what a suspicious lot you are!) then try it out now!

Hoooooookay, people. Let's begin with three small corrections to the RotW results...

• Firstly, Danny v/d Kleij sent us a Nightmare Run that somehow got missed. Sorry Danny, our mistake.
• Secondly, Aleksander Osipov has kindly pointed out that just because he sent in a weed fueled Nightmare 100%, instead of a Nightmare Run, that doesn't mean it isn't a valid Nightmare Run. Point taken. Dumbass, to be sure, but point taken nevertheless. :-)
• Thirdly, Tim Doherty sent me an Easy 100% over ICQ just before the deadline which I said I'd pass on to Thomas, but didn't. Since it was my fault I guess we should include it. But let that be a lesson to you all! NEVER trust me.

These changes have now been added to the horror page and the League Table. Some of you are still reporting the occasional problem sending demos to us. Being the kind and loving people we are we've come up with a solution to this old and annoying problem. To be honest, it was Nolan's idea but I stole it to make myself look good.[1] More details to come when the next contest is posted in, ohhhhhh, a couple of days.

And now, Ladies and Gentlemen, settle back for 2:53 seconds of mayhem as Thomas Bergendorff takes TO of a2d2 by beating Justin's Nightmare 100% by a full thirty seconds. Great fun, but he could have been a little more aggressive at the end... ;-)

Now that you've relaxed after that piece of Optic bashing by Thomas, it's time to fire you up again with some Basil bashing from Connor Fitzgerald. He used smoother play (I guess, I can't actually see much difference in the demos :-)) to take one second off of both runs of dwell taking the time down to 0:34 on both Easy and Nightmare. Very nice.

And we'll finish this demo round-up (we've actually had a whole pile of new tablefillers from two players arrive since I started this update (typical!) but they'll have to carry over to the next update now. Why? Because I'm too lazy to change the tables again. :-)) with another bit of Total Ownage. This time, for the first time ever, by ME! I took Andrey's remaining three records on mexx8 to have the whole sweet[2] map to myself.

• The Easy 100% was pretty simple to improve by sixty-nine seconds to 6:23. I would have improved it some more but it was 69 seconds. *giggle* 69 *snort*. :-)
• The Easy Run was a bit harder to improve but I managed to get it down to 4:11, nine seconds faster.
• And the Nightmare Run was an absolute bitch. This 4:39, thirty seconds faster, was only the second time I ever reached the exit. And it'll also be the last. :-)

Only one piece of mail this week, from an old friend...

Dear Mr Morfans,
Were those messages in your last update real or made up? If they were real then how come there were no demos from Helmut or Vinvan?
      Yours confusedly,
      Neil Plug. (USA)

Good questions, Neil. I only wish I had good answers to go with them.

So that's it. More demos, a new RotW and the rest of the Rabbit Run demos coming in the next few days. Really, we're too good to you...

...but you're worth it. :-)

All demos download is available here (Denmark).

[1] Didn't work, did it? :-(
[2] Actually, although it's a very well crafted level it's pretty much very unsweet, running wise. Can you imagine us adding a map with 5 minute runs these days? HA! Fat fucking chance. :-)

A lot of people have been breaking their legs over the last few weeks, and we finally have two winners. Congratulations to Martin Selinus for yet another win and Anders Nordensten for his first win of the season (and a second place too!). Good job lads, you deserved to win. Especially Anders who beat the crap out of every other runner in the easy 100% contest. We usually tell 1st place from 2nd place by milliseconds, but in this case he won with around 3 seconds. Check the horror page for the results and demos. The standings have changed a bit, see the 2003 Contest League Table.

A few notes I made while receiving the demos and watching them:

• Old runner Evan Wagner made a run! Hope to see you again Evan.
• Two girls participated. Girls are cool.
• Alex has been smoking to much of that green stuff (alternatively chewing too much shrooms) because he apparently thought the contest consisted of doing easy and nightmare 100%. His nightmare 100% is included in the big demo .dz.
• Basil can't ever name his files correctly. He'll get it right when hell freezes over or when the world supply of weed is gone.
• Ken has BIG problems learning which email address to submit his demos to (sda_contest). This is very strange after being told a number of times and also it says very clear on the contest pages where to send the demos.

We'll post a new contest in a while (I have no clue when to be honest as I'm off to Barcelona on Wednesday).

Today, my friends, I though that as well as bringing you the latest demos (only a few, I'm afraid) I'd let you see just a very few of the e-mails I've received in the last week or two. This may give you some insight into just what speedrunners the world over are thinking at this moment. But first, two tablefillers from me.

• Nightmare 100% of trinity in 2:43.
• And Nightmare 100% of mymap in 4:23.

Dear Mr Morfans,
This latest RotW map of yours, horror, is just so simple! Surely this must be the perfect map for anyone to have a go on, no matter how bad their running skills or how "retired" they think they are.
      Respectfully,
      Helmut von Bustenhalter. (Germany)

That's right, Helmut! It's simple, fun and it's also been suggested that it's a pretty good cure for piles. So don't forget to send your Contest 2 entries in before the Midnight Sunday deadline.

Our next demo comes from Basil de Vries. Basil decided to get a little sweet revenge on Lowdis for beating him to the Easy Run of mymap record recently by stealing the Nightmare Run. He did it by cutting every corner he could find and then making a mad dash through the shambler hell at the end giving him a time of 1:24, eight seconds faster than Thomas. And speaking of confusing Dutchmen...

Dear Mr Morfans,
Just thought I'd drop you a quick note to say that I agree with the German fellow in the last letter.
      Admiringly,
      Vanvin van Vandervinvon. (The Netherlands)

Thanks, Vinvan. Apart from anything else your letter has given me an excuse to put up a link to the current contest again.

Basil takes a record, Basil loses a record. That's always been the rule around here. Probably. This time it was Connor Fitzgerald who took Basil's Easy Run Marathon through the ikspq levels in the reasonable time of 3:49. He loses maybe ten seconds to a mistake in the first map alone so there's still room for improvement here.

Just the one demo from Thomas Bergendorff this time, but it's a beauty. He improved DanielH's a2d2 Easy Run by three seconds using a new route. It's fast. It's furious. It's 0:40 seconds of RECOMMENDED love.

Dear Mr Morfans,
Hello. It's Helmut again from the first letter (above). Is it just my imagination or aren't there many demos at the moment?
      Respectfully,
      Helmut von Bustenhalter. (Germany)

Unfortunately, Helmut, you're right. What with the RotW, the lovely weather and the fact that this is traditionally a slack time anyway things have been a little sparse in recent weeks. But just to show that I stiil care I've made two demos that, unusually for me, aren't table fillers...

• In what is probably the best demo I've ever made I improved Fab's Nightmare 100% of mexx1 by a huge sixteen seconds to 1:06.
• And I also improved Andrey's Nightmare 100% of mexx8 by fifteen seconds to 8:14. Bugger me that's a long level!

That's all for today. I was going to ramble on about some old bollocks for a while but apparently people want to see the update before they go to bed/work. So I'll say goodbye.

Goodbye.

All demos download is available here (Denmark).

Today is the day that I'll unleash the 2nd batch of tRR demos. These three demos are topnotch running, it's just a shame that they weren't released earlier 'coz today they might not stand out as they would've back when they were recorded. I'm not saying the demos are bad compared to the demos that gets recorded today, but speedrunning constantly evolves and when they were recorded they were reeeeeally good, but I'll let you form your own opinion.

• Let's begin with the newest demo of those three. It was recorded in March of 2001 by Markus Taipale. He skipped the tricky slope-jump trick (which so far has been the only way to skip the major parts of this map), and instead he used a monster boost to gain enough speed to simply avoid that trick! Quite 'tricky' eh?! ;-) I think this record will stand forever, unless some loony Hungarian decides to make a comeback to speedrunning.... oh, maybe I should mention what map I'm talking about. It's Termination Central of course, done in 0:23.
• This next demo was also done in 2001 by Martin Selinus. It was his 2nd demo for the tRR project, beating out Markus by 1 second! It's mostly just mad bunnying, with the exception of the teleport-curl-jumptoexit-thingie at the end. The Tower Of Despair in 0:29.
• And the final demo is courtesy of Peter Horvath. It was made all the way back in 1999, and it still remains as the third oldest id record on the tables! The bunnies aren't up to todays standards, but the demo includes alot of really hard tricks, well at least it's hard to pull those tricks off in the same demo, and I think that's the main reason why it hasn't been beaten yet, and also because it hasn't been available to everybody yet of course, until now. It's still a mystery to me why he doesn't get stuck on the 'stairs' towards the end (where the grenade launcher is), it certainly looks like he does, but I apparently he just misses them by a few pixels :-) Enough talking, here's the demo: The Ogre Citadel in 0:31.

That leaves us with just one more batch of tRR demos. When I'll post those demos still remain a bit uncertain, but probably not until after the current RotW contest has ended, so stay tuned!

All demos download is available here (Denmark).

HEAR YE! HEAR YE! LATEST RotW CONTEST STARTS NOW!

That's right, my little membranes, it's time once again to get your running and jumping shoes on and pit yourself against the rest of the world in a challenge of pointless simplicity.

This contest, crafted for us by Carl Tholin and Johan Nilsson, is far simpler than the last one, but it contains three of the basic tenets of speedrunning...

1. Jumping down a slope speeds you up.
2. Quad rocket jumping is fun.
3. Some textures can be very, very ugly.

Full details for the contest are available here, any questions, mail us. Now go!

Actually, before you go you might like to download and watch the following demos...

• Thomas Bergendorff went butt-faced crazy on epoch by taking TO of the level with two cool Nightmare Runs. First a 1:13 and then, two days later, a 1:11, three and five seconds faster than Ken respectively.
• Basil de Vries sent in an Easy Run of mymap using the OG jump to get the silver key and improve Michael's time by nine seconds to 1:13, but unfortunately for him Lowdis had already submitted a 1:13 just using better bunnies. Both players added a boost off the vore and a sweet gren jump over the bars at the end but it's the first demo that counts I'm afraid, Basil. (Both demos are included in the all demos download below.)
• Speedrunning magician Robert Axelsson and his beautiful assistant, Rickard, sent in two killer coops.
  • They filled the empty Nightmare Run spot on tower with a slick (optimum?) 0:10. (0:11)
  • Then they improved Hansson and P-B's Easy Run of cult by one second to 0:15. They think it's optimum, and who am I to argue. OPTIMUM
• Carl Tholin continues to do what he does best, taking virginities. This time it was Tim Doherty's coop virginity in a mad 2 Player Easy 100% Marathon through jzblue. This has to be the the most remote coop we've ever had (Sweden/New Zealand) which makes this 1:10 (1:19) all the more impressive.
• Which leaves us with our final demo of this update. I don't usually include demos that arrive while I'm updating but this time I just thopught what the hell. It's an Easy Run of ikspq5 by rising star Connor Fitzgerald in 0:46, beating Peter's time by two seconds by adding a bunch of bunnys and a better GL pickup. RECOMMENDED

That'll do for today. I was going to delight you all with some music, but that'll have to wait until next time now. :-)

All demos download is available here (Denmark).

What's that you say? Well, today is the day that I'll post the first three demos from the Rabbit Run (upcoming QdQ project that has been in the works since 1999...). The project has gotten delayed a zillion times and no-one really knows when it'll be out, so I took the decision to post the demos that are valid (demos done from scratch) SDA demos. I know that alot of people has been waiting forever to see these demos, so why not just post them instead of growing dust on them? In this update I'll give you three demos, two of which has been improved even further, but you won't see them until I post the third and final batch of tRR demos. That's right folks, this is the first batch of demos and next week I'll post another batch (3 demos), and in about 14 days or so I'll post the final 4 demos, so stay tuned! This simply doesn't get any better, it's topnotch running from some of the truly great runners that has more or less retired. I guess you could think of this as their final and best work, their grand finale before retiring (given the fact that they won't make an unsuspected comeback to speedrunning that is!).

Enough babbling, here's the demos!

• Markus Taipale, the grand master of bunnies, was the first man to attempt the tricky barrel boost on The Slipgate Complex. The funny thing is that we actually posted Markus' demo on the Bunny Comparison page quite some time ago, but we never got around to adding it to the SDA tables, don't ask me why coz I have no idea why we didn't! But here it is, e1m1 in 0:22. Peter Horvath did 0:21 a few days after Markus had made his demo, but you won't be seeing that demo until the final batch is posted :-)
• The next demo is a good example of how much speed you can gain by using a quadded grenade launcher and add a 'couple' of bunnies. I'm talking about the run on The Elder God Shrine of course. Martin Selinus blasted his way through the corridors to get this 0:38. This demo was later improved by Markus, and you will also see this one in the last batch of tRR demos.
• And the final demo of the evening is also by Markus. This demo still stands as the record, even though with todays highly evolved bunnies, someone could bring it down to 0:29 (I think...). There's no really hard tricks involved, just alot of mad bunnying! The map is Castle Of The Damned and the demo is 0:30. Optimized?

Ok, that was the end of the first batch of tRR demos. Check back in a week and I'll give you three more :-)

All demos download is available here (Denmark).

* Markus, if you read this, email me! *

Phew. The contest is finally over. Head over to the Rune-Run page for all the results and demos. Then take a look at where everyone stands in the 2003 Contest League Table (if it's ready).

Congratulations to Martin Selinus, Robert Axelsson and Thomas Stubgaard on their wins. They were thoroughly deserved in the face of very stiff opposition.

Thanks to everybody for the record number of entries. But don't worry. The next contest won't be quite so grueling. Probably. :-)

Okay people, it's Sunday evening already! And that means you only have a little over 24 hours to get your Rune-Run demos in. In fact you probably have a couple of hours more than that because the contest won't actually close until I do a final mail download in the early hours of Tuesday morning, probably around 03:00 GMT when I get out of bed for my middle-of-the-night beer. Any entries received after that will, I'm afraid, not count. So whether they're l33t as |=u(|< or just the best you could do in the time don't forget to send them in. :-)

While I'm here I might as well chuck three new demos at you. First, Michael Hudson improved his Easy Run of mymap by ten seconds to 1:22 by noticing a really bad piece of level design. As he said himself, not quite e2m1 bad, but pretty bad just the same. :-)

Then Thomas Bergendorff filled the empty Nightmare Run spot on the same map in the time of 1:32. Cool way to get the silver key, Bergles.

And finally I did the Nightmare 100% of rit2 in the okay time of 2:20.

That's all for now. Remember : Rune-Run demos : send them here : by midnight tomorrow.

I can almost feel the love from here.

All demos download is available here (Denmark).

The long wait is over! Mr. Pflug finally found time in between his numerous gaming addictions to finish the new version of Dzip. Here's what he had to say:

Head to the download page and get what's been in the works for over a year... a new Dzip which is not tied down to it's strange .dz file format. Instead it will work with any files that your installed plugins support. Currently I've only got plugins for .dz and .pak, but I hope to finally start working on .zip support now. When I have it done, you'll just be able to drop the dll into your Dzip directory and it will work!

Only two demos this time and they're both from Denis Nazarov who took 1 second off both his trinity runs. Easy in 0:22, and Nightmare also in 0:22.

Also, some time ago I was goofing around on the 100m map, and I managed to get 14.1 by ONLY zig-zagging, i.e. using the strafe and forward keys only, no bunnying allowed :-) If anyone's up for the challange, go ahead and see if you can beat it, the fastest time will end up on the Bunny Comparison page.

Download the new Dzip, Denis' two demos and the 100m demo in one .dz here (Denmark).

Think you know a lot of SDA trivia, eh? Okay then, can you remember who said the following in a .txt file back in March 2001 and which map he said it about?

Ok, I know I'll get in trouble for saying this but, IT'S FUCKING OPTIMIZED.
It's theoretically possible to go faster but not humanly possible damnit.

Well, while your all thinking about that I'm going to say a few words about the current RotW contest. Firstly, we've made a couple of minor changes to the rules. The most important is that we have a new e-mail address to send your contest entries to. So from now on any contest entries (not regular demos, they still go to the normal address) should go to sda_contest.
The other change is with the scoring. Now anyone who sends an entry in is sure to get at least one championship point. This shouldn't make any difference in the race for the top position and the grand prize, but it should mean that those of us who battle away at the bottom of the table can make more of a fight of it.
Speaking of prizes, we haven't decided what to do for the winner yet. But I'm of the opinion that it should be something physical that the winner can show off to his/her friends and relatives. Something like a huge, ornate, solid gold trophy with the winner's name on it, except obviously much, much smaller and cheaper. :-)
Remember, you only have one more week to get your entries in!

The answer to the "who said it?" question was of course Daniel Magnusson, commenting about his excellent 1:05 Nightmare 100% of The Slipgate Complex. And who would have doubted him? Not me. I thought that record would stand until the end of time. So when Thomas Stubgaard told me he was going to try and improve it I told him he was insane. In fact, if you'll pardon the bad language, I told him he was fucking mad. But after two months of "ARRRRGH. One kill missing" and "ARRRRRRGH. 1:05.1" e-mails his persistance, luck and route tweaks finally paid off and he sent in the 86th(!!!) demo we have on e1m1. Ladies and gentlemen, beating the current record by one second, I give you this amazing 1:04. MUST DOWNLOAD

Now for a few demos on the new maps, starting with my beloved "red truck map", trinity.

• I improved Ash's Easy Run by twenty-one seconds with a completely new route to get 0:30. Ohhhhhhh, I just love quad-grenades. :-)
• SDA newcomer Ivan Vladev used a slicker shot to open the car secret and improved my time by one second to 0:29.
• But I fought back with an earlier grenade throw and also miraculously managed to preserve some speed after the jump to get a lucky 0:27.
• Then along came Denis Nazarov with his fancy "bunny hopping" and "air control" and "shooting triggers from a distance through a tiny gap" and blew us away with this 0:23. He did throw the grenade much later than I did, though. Probably a whole second later so 0:22 should be possible... HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
• Denn also did the same on Nightmare skill to fill the gap in the tables with a 0:23.

And just to get things started I've decided to post my old ebony1 Nightmare 100% which I made some time ago when we first checked out this level for runnability. It's of my usual standard, but I'm quite proud of it. :-) 1:37.

SDA : It's kinda like testicles for women and breasts for men, if you see what I mean...

All demos download is available here (Denmark).

Here we are again, bringing you the latest demos on the new maps, not as many as we could've hoped for though, but I think that is due to the current RotW contest which is still running.

• Daniel Andersson started out by doing the Easy Run of ebony1 in 0:40, but Denis Nazarov improved that by 2 seconds to get 0:38. Nice rocket-jumping in both demos!
• Not many hours after we had added the new maps, Rutger Baks sent in the Easy Run of rit2 which he did 2 years ago.... his time was 0:43, but Denis destroyed that time by getting 0:37, 6 seconds faster than Rutger.
• Daniel also had a go at the "red truck map", or trinity if you will. He did the Easy Run in 0:51. Can someone do it faster with Quad?
• And the final demo on the new maps is courtesy of Michael Hudson. He sent a slower demo to start with, but thankfully for him he sent it to the wrong address, so we never received it :-) But anyways, the demo he DID manage to send us is the Easy Run of mymap, which he did in 1:32.

That's it for the new maps, and now here's a little surprise for you all.

• A bunch of demos were recorded at SpeedCon2001, but one of them was never posted, because it was supposed to be part of a QdQ(ish) project through Beyond Belief. The project was never finished (sounds familiar?), so I'm just going to post the demo now before it gets lost forever. Here you go ladies and gentlemen, 4 player mad-coop through bbelief1 in 0:35, by Ilkka Kurkela, Marlo Galinski, Aleksander Osipov and Will Marsh. Enjoy!

All demos download is available here (Denmark).

Since Morfy told you guys I was going to add some maps it seems I have to. Thanks a lot you bastard. I was going to slouch in front of the telly with a huge glass of the finest single malt. But no, he put me to work with no concern for my well being. Morfy might come across as the nicest person on earth[1], but he is most definitely not.

Enough of my bitching and let's get on with it. Today we are going to add four maps, which is indeed a lot. I hope these maps won't keep you from what's real important in life. Yes the RotW Contest. Remember, the contest will be over in a few weeks but thesese maps will be on sda forever (unless Nolan gets drunk again and decides to erase SDA. Could happen, he's one mean drunk).

The first map is ugly. For the love of God it has a red truck in it. Any map with a red truck should be banned from sda. But Morfy said playing this map was the most fun he has had in years (he leads quite a sad life I'd say...red truck???? goodness me) so here goes: Trinity a.k.a. the map with the red truck. Name your demos tri_xxx.dem.

The second map is a small map with quite a few secrets, I like it, though it has a few annoying details but overall it should provide us with some cool runs. The map is Ebony. Name your demos eb_xxx.dem.

The third map is Escape the castle.... I can see 2-3 different route possibilites for runs so finding out which is the faster should be interesting. Name your demos rit2_xxx.dem.

The fourth and final map is Mymap. Crap name but a good map. Name your demos my_xxx.dem.

That's it. Have fun!

[1] Complete bollocks, I know. But I've always thought of him as a cuddly teddybear. With a rocket launcher of course.

Since we started the latest RotW contest I've been inundated[1] with e-mails saying...

Dear Mr Morfans,
I've really enjoyed working on my demos for the Rune-Run contest and feel inspired to try some more runs but can't be arsed to look through the tables to find a run to improve. Any suggestions?
      Yours lovingly,
      A. Speedrunner.

Therefore, my esteemed friend Mr Bergas Lowdidorff will this very evening (or maybe tomorrow, he's a very busy man at the moment) be adding a few more runnin' arenas to this grand ol' archive. So now would seem like a good time to get the few demos we've received in the last week out of the way.

After posting his old r1m7 improvement that he found lying around on his hard drive Nolan Pflug thought he might as well further improve it. Massively. Doing what he does best, close quarter rocket killing, he took a further sixty-six seconds off the time to get 3:20.

Next we have the first ever SDA demo from the man who gave us the Rune-Run map, Connor Fitzgerald. He decided to start in a nice gentle way, beating a Peter Horvath Easy Run! He improved ikspq2 by two seconds to 0:56. Impressive stuff. :-)

It's never a disappointment to receive a coop demo or two from R&R, otherwise known as The Axelsson Brothers, or sometimes just Robert and Rickard (that's Robert and Rickard Axelsson in case anyone out there still hasn't managed to work it out yet). They used a sweet double rocket jump on Shub Niggurath's Pit to improve both the easy and nightmare Runs by one second to 0:15. OPTIMUM

It's been a while since we had an update to the Bunny Comparison page, but recently we've had new demos from Weixing Ye, newcomers Oskar Calson and Ivan Vladev, and also some very poor demos from Me.

Finally, I'd just like to mention that for the last couple of weeks Stubby has been trawling through our download directories and has converted every single .zip into a .dz! As you will appreciate, this was a huge job. Of course, if he was running Linux and not Windows he would have been able to script it in about 30 seconds and let it chug it's way through them, taking about 1 hour total. But hey, credit where it's due. ;-)

Kan du ha' det godt indtil vi snakkes igen?

[1] I'm afraid this is a total lie. Nobody has mailed me. Sorry. It just seemed like a nice way of building up to the next paragraph.

Hey there, my pretties. The full rules for the first contest in our 2003 series are now available here.

Feedback so far has been overwhelmingly positive so settle back and run your little socks off. Remember, you only have three more weeks to get your entries in... :-)

Since yesterday was "Nail Your Messiah To A Tree Friday" across the Christian world I thought that we should have a religious theme to the update. But since my own religion demands the extensive use of donkeys in it's various rituals and bizarre acts of worship it might not actually be a very good idea. Oh well, I guess we'll just have to carry on as normal.

You would have thought that Thomas Stubgaard would have had enough of the Haunted Halls by now, what with already having TO of the map and having done sixteen different demos on it already. But just to prove that his skillz are still getting better he's gone and improved his Easy Run by one more second to 0:42. MUST DOWNLOAD

Since Dima Steklov discovered the new exit trick on corp2 there has been a flurry of top quality demos flying in to us...

• Following on from the three records he took last week, Thomas Bergendorff improved his Easy Run to 0:09. He admit's that he doesn't have the scrotal capacity to do this on Nightmare though. :-) OPTIMUM
• He then went on to take TO of the level by improving Dima's Easy 100% by one second to 0:11. This might well also be optimum but perhaps 0:10 is just about possible with perfect play.
• Then along came Denis Nazarov to reclaim the Nightmare 100% for Mother Russia with another totally new route, beating Lowdis's time by three seconds to 0:34. A nice demo but he was forced to wait for the quad to run out before he could jump to the exit, so...
• ...he then came up with yet another route, incorporating Weixing style bunny-hops (as seen in his 100M demo) and some super smooth rocket jumping to save yet another four seconds to 0:30. RECOMMENDED

Tim Doherty has once again discovered that running Rogue Marathons is more fun than masturbation and has made yet another big improvement to his doe1 Easy 100%. Seven levels of death in 20:06, thirty seconds faster than previously. Sooooo close to the 20 minute barrier.

And to finish off the demos we have three Udder coops.

• Daniel Hansson and Jonny Andersson improved their Easy 100% of The Wind Tunnels by four seconds to 1:02. Good, but still room for improvement.
• Then they improved their Easy Run of escape by another two seconds to 0:44. An excellent piece of coop play with loads of well timed boosts. :-)
• Then Daniel Andersson arrived back from whoring his butt around the cold streets of Uddavalla and joined them to improve the three player Nightmare 100% of The Slipgate Complex, improving Hannson and P-B's demo they made with KimSvea by two seconds to 0:32.

Next, a little sad news. It appears that IllMind Moves is now closed for business. A great shame, of course, but you've got to respect Ingmar's decision. If it ain't fun any more, stop before it becomes a chore. So lets give a big cheer for the trick-jumping, straight-talking, sheep-shagging[1] dude that truly knows when a spoon is a spoon, even when there isn't one.

On a slightly connected note, you've probaby noticed that the updates have been a little thin over the last few weeks. This is because Myself and both the Thomas's have been under a whole load of pressure IRL, both personal and work related, and so we haven't managed to get all the things we had planned for SDA finished. But never fear, the big suprise Stubby mentioned is on it's way, Bergie will post some new maps once he's got a flat to live in and the new RotW contest series will be starting...

NOW!

That's right! Even though we haven't managed to finish the contest page with all the rules, plans, dates and other assorted miscellany, we (Mr Thomas Bergendorff and I) are pleased to be able to say that the SDA RotW Championship 2003 is finally underway. Full details will be posted within the next day or two, but for now all you need to know is that the first contest will be on this map, you have several weeks to get your entries in, and all four regular disciplines are being run.

I'm sure everyone will be able to manage at LEAST an Easy Run. :-)

All demos download is available here (Denmark).

[1] I don't know why I wrote that. As far as I'm aware Ingmar has never had carnal ovine relations. But since the phrase "sheep-shagging" is inherently funny I'm going to leave it in. :-)

It was five years ago today that Gunnar and I opened SDA here on planetquake. It doesn't quite seem like it though... Anyway to celebrate the occasion I decided to post a demo I did over two years ago. Yeah I broke my own suggestion of not leaving demos to rot on your hard drive that are better than current records. I improved my r1m7 nightmare 100%, the #1 demo on the oldest records list, by 1:06 to get 4:26.

Just a quick note to say that the IRC Stats are working again thanks to _df and Michael Hudson. Cheers guys! :-)

Occasionally we will receive a bunch of demos that are even more fun to watch than disembowelling a total stranger. This update is one of those times. A double Id improvement, a new player, Hipnotic and Rogue demos and some mad ownage. Somehow it makes those small acts of random mass murder seem so very futile...

We shall begin with Thomas Stubgaard doing what he does best: Nightmare axe wielding in the Haunted Halls.

• As if having TO of the level wasn't enough he consolidated his position by further improving the Nightmare Run by three seconds to 0:56. Survival on this level is actually impossible. The only way to make it to the quad is to shave your whole body, oil yourself up, close your eyes and wait for a passing miracle to whisk you through. As you can imagine, this doesn't happen very often. MUST DOWNLOAD
• But even that is pretty easy stuff compared to the Nightmare 100%. Consider this demo a lesson in gameplay and ammo counting. 2:02, six seconds faster than previously. MUST DOWNLOAD

And now it's my pleasure to welcome Dima Steklov to the world of SDA as he submits his first ever demo to us. He found a completely new route through corp2 which allowed him to improve Kimmo's Easy 100% by two seconds to 0:12. Nice rocket work and cool hopping! Hopefully we'll be seeing more from Dima soon...

When a demo arrives from Denis Nazarov it's usually something pretty special and this is no exception. He improved Ilkka's Easy 100% of hipdm1 by five fat seconds to get 0:33. TOPPINGLY RECOMMENDED ;-)

Since I haven't contacted him in the last week with the details of the new RotW Thomas Bergendorff has had time to produce some cool demos...

• First the 100% demos on pb2.
  • He took Justin's Nightmare 100% tablefiller to task and destroyed it by forty-five seconds to 3:10. You may remember a couple of weeks ago I mentioned stupid dying fiends going all solid on you and deflecting grenades. Well in this demo there's and even better incident. Just after the second quad he emerges from the slime and throws a quadded grenade at the monsters in the doorway. However, just before it hits the knight the deathknight kills the knight and it just bounces harmlessly off the dying knight. Dumb metal gits.
  • Following on from the previous demo it didn't take him much effort to improve Marlo's Easy 100% by eight seconds to 2:07.
• After watching Dima's corp2 demo he borrowed the route to improve both the Easy and Nightmare runs to 0:10, both three seconds faster than Kimmo. He thinks that 0:09 should be possible, so the challenge is on for all you mad optimisers out there...
• He also used the new method of exiting to completely change the route of the Nightmare 100% and improve Marlos record by two seconds to 0:37. A great, fun demo with some nifty axe work. :-)

The Rogue levels continue to be assaulted by Tim Doherty and Michael Hudson, the rogue-runner and , errrr, let me think.... the rogue-trooper respectively.

• Michael improved his doe1 Easy Run Marathon by a very respectable twenty-eight seconds to 9:14. A couple of very unfortunate mistakes here showing that 8:xx should be possible for anyone with the balls to try...
• Tim was not at all happy with his doe2 Easy Run Marathon and so made this small 168 second improvement to 16:03. This is actually 16:03.99 so to improve this you would need to find some way to save nearly a whole second. :-)

That's all from me for today. Keep licking.

All demos download is available here (Denmark).

Let's kick it off with Daniel Hansson who seems to be on a roll at the moment:

• Easy Run of czg07a in 1:19, 1 second faster than himself.
• Easy Run of czg07a in 1:18, again 1 second faster than himself.
• Easy Run of climb in 0:24, 1 seconds faster than himself.
• Easy Run of placebo in 1:48, 11 seconds faster than himself.
• Easy 100% of jdungeon in 0:52, 2 seconds faster than himself.
• Nightmare 100% of jdungeon in 0:50, 4 seconds faster than himself.
• Marathon - Easy Run of czg07 in 2:38, 6 seconds faster than himself.

Arturo Garcia Lasca struck back against Robert's attack on his demos:

• Easy Run of church in 0:55, 1 second faster than Robert.
• Easy 100% of church in 1:05, 2 seconds faster than Robert.

SDA's very own Thomas Bergendorff has found time in between his busy schedule to do a demo:

• Easy 100% of epoch in 1:40, 3 seconds faster than Arturo.

It's been quite some time since we've seen a single player demo from Rickard Axelsson:

• Easy Run of funrun in 0:51, 1 second faster than Juozas Rimas.

Michael Hudson has made another attack on the Rogue maps:

• Easy Run of r1m4 in 0:47, 2 seconds faster than himself.
• Nightmare Run of r1m4 in 1:02, 5 seconds faster than himself.

Weixing Ye found what I believe MUST be the very last demo from 2002 on his harddisc!

• Nightmare Run of scream in 0:18, 3 seconds faster than Basil.

Tim Doherty makes a rather spectacular comeback with this demo:

• Marathon - Easy 100% of doe1 in 20:36, 74 seconds faster than himself. Nice to see you back in action Timothy :-)

And finally Nolan and I went on a mad chopping spree in The Haunted Halls:

• Nightmare 100% of The Haunted Halls in 1:39, 28 seconds faster than Morfy and I, and 29 seconds better than my single player record. Man, what a bitch this was to get!

All demos download is available here (Denmark).

I'm sure more than a few of you are aware of my mild puzzle game addiction that started a little over two years ago. It's caused many delays in Dzip since 2.6. The latest one was caused by a burst of motivation I got at the beginning of January. I decided to re-write bricks from scratch as a windows program. After over 2 months it's been officially released on the bricks page. If I never convinced you to try it before, or if you like puzzle games, or if you're bored, or just wondering WTF i'm talking about, you should go there and check it out. ;-)

Maybe now i'll finish Dzip v2.9...